


Ghosts of the Past

by GlassRose



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4665237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassRose/pseuds/GlassRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cass wants to know what happened to Ephiny (once known as Courier Six) those days she left alone to walk a lonesome road. Ephiny wishes she could remember her past. There's ghosts in Nipton, and there's ghosts in Ephiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of the Past

“Too late to head back to the Strip now,” Cass said, yawning. “I’d say we press on to Nipton. There’ll be a bed, or at least a mattress and four walls we can use for the night.”

Ephiny shuddered. “Lot of ghosts in Nipton.”

Cass resettled her pack. “Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts now.”

“Not as lost spirits, no, but…” She shook her head. “A massacre like that doesn’t leave a place unchanged. I don’t care what moral laws they were breaking, it wasn’t right to go the way they did.”

“They died cowards.”

“They died scared. Inculta’s lottery didn’t prove shit except that people are frightened of the Legion and don’t know what they even want. You didn’t see ‘em on the crosses, Cass. The blame for all of that is on the Legion.”

Cass put her hands up in surrender. “All right, all right. I wasn’t there.”

They walked in silence for some time as the dim lights of Nipton grew closer. Already a few intrepid settlers were rebuilding after the NCR had cleared the bodies and burned them. Ephiny was listening to the night, but no hostile creatures made themselves known. As the buildings began to appear in the darkness, Cass said, “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what,” Ephiny said, trying to determine if that sound was a radscorpion or paranoia.

“A heart like yours up against all the folks you’ve had to waste.”

“I’m no different than anyone else,” Ephiny said, shrugging.

“How’s that?”

“I justify everything I do to myself. It’s how I live. How everyone lives.”

Cass grunted. “Ain’t that the truth. So, you gonna tell me about those days you went off alone behind that wrecked metro car?”

“I–Cass, I told you, I–not yet. Not yet.”

“All right then. Let’s see if this building’s empty.” Cass knocked on the door of a house. There was a slight rattle from inside but otherwise nothing. “What do you reckon?”

“Just the house, I think,” Ephiny said, but she readied a rifle anyway. “Go on.”

Cass kicked the door in, and Ephiny turned on her Pip-Boy light. “Looks empty to me,” Cass commented. That was when the buzzing started.

“Fuck!” Ephiny snapped, firing off rounds at the Cazadors coming down the stairs. “I hate these bastards!”

Cass dodged the stingers and blew one’s head off. “Son of a bitch!” she snarled as one slammed her against the wall.

Five exhausting minutes later, Cass and Ephiny sat on the floor, propped up against each other, surrounded by bug bits. “Whoever brought these fuckers here I am going to kill.”

Ephiny groaned as she pressed a syringe of Med-X into her arm and injected it. “Honestly, I’d rather deal with a yao guai than these damn bugs.”

Cass paused, a water bottle at her lips. “What’s a yao guai?”

Ephiny frowned. “It’s like…a dog. A big, mean dog. Real hideous thing. You’re not supposed to feed them.”

“Where do you see ‘em?”

“Zion…and…I don’t know. It’s a thing, right? ‘Don’t feed the yao guai!’ Mr. New Vegas says it. Doesn’t he?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But–hmm. I know I’ve heard it.”

“Maybe from before you got, you know, shot in the head?”

Ephiny rubbed her head. The wound was barely visible anymore, and even the hair had grown back, but it still twinged when she thought about it. “No doubt, like every goddamn thing in my head I can’t place. Anyway, fuck if I’m staying here tonight with dead cazzies stinking up the place. I’m asking the residents before knocking down any other doors.”

"It’s a damn shame you didn’t think of that first.”

“Ah, shut up,” Ephiny said, but there was no bite to it. “Didn’t see you objecting. I need your machete.” She located the nest upstairs and slashed through all the eggs before they left.

 

The few Wastelanders at the Nipton town hall found a bed for Cass and Ephiny in gratitude. Apparently the cazadors had been in the house when they arrived, so they’d locked it and hoped the bugs would starve. The bed was just a small mattress in the back of an old pharmacy but there was a trunk to hold their gear and it didn’t smell too terrible. Sleep came for them quickly.

 

It was still night when Cass woke suddenly, unsure what had alerted her. She reached for the nearest weapon when Ephiny whispered, “Sara, no!”

“Eph?” Cass asked, squinting in the darkness.

“Run, Sara! It’s too much…it’s too much, please, I can’t, I’m scared…”

“Ephiny, hey, you’re dreaming, wake up.”

“No!” Ephiny sobbed. “No, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, please, please, oh god.”

Cass shook her. Hard. “Wake the fuck up, girl, you’re freaking out.”

Ephiny sat up, gasping. “Cass?”

“Right here. You okay?”

“No!” she sobbed. “Told you there were ghosts in Nipton.”

“Talk to me, then, what the fuck am I here for?”

Ephiny shook her head. “Not to take on my baggage. I mean, maybe I could tell you if I didn’t love you, but I’m–fuck.”

Cass blinked. “You love me?” she asked, her voice low and amused.

Ephiny curled up in a ball. “Fuck.”

“You never said anything.”

“Yeah well,” Ephiny retorted, her voice muffled, “you rejected me when I asked so I didn’t wanna bother you. Like being with you too much to wreck it.”

Huh. “We barely knew each other then, Eph.”

“And now?”

Cass’s hand slid across Ephiny’s shoulder to lift her face up. “Now I wanna be there for you. You gotta let me in if you want this to work.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I will.” A slight smirk crossed her face. “Tomorrow, though?”

Cass laughed. “Yeah. Sounds like a plan. But for now…” She leaned in close and met Ephiny’s lips, the softness surprising her. Too soft for a desert wasteland adventurer. That or Eph just took really good care of her lips. “I love you too,” she whispered as she drew back, and Ephiny wrapped her arms around Cass tightly. “By the way, who’s Sara?”

“Sara…Lyons? Do you know her?”

“You were calling her name in your sleep.”

Ephiny let out an annoyed huff. “A name in my head with no face. Someday I’ll figure this shit out.”

Cass pressed gentle kisses to her face. “I’ll help you. Come on, hero, get some sleep. We’ve got people to save, other people to impress, and a world to discover tomorrow.”

“‘m not a hero,” Ephiny muttered, but she smiled anyway as she drifted off to sleep in Rose of Sharon Cassidy’s warm embrace.


End file.
